Before Blizzard releases future Patch 2.5, I wanted to share with the development team a list of class changes that the majority of the community would support/endorse…
Amazon
Cold Arrow - increase range to be the same as Fire Arrow (reduced range for Cold Arrow persists for both Amazon and Act 1 Cold Rogue)
Ice Arrow - buff damage as skill is single target (e.g. double damage as compared to Freezing Arrow and would make skill more valuable versus bosses and elites)
Impale - benefits from critical strike and deadly strike (arbitrary this single-target skill is unable to crit, apart of Amazon’s repertoire)
Assassin
Martial Arts - charge-up skill duration doubled to 30 seconds from 15 seconds (helps with pvp) and remove next-hit delay caused by some abilities, such as Claws of Thunder and Phoenix Strike
Weapon Block - works when running (chance to block reduced to 1/3, capped at 25%)
Blade Shield - no longer uses weapon durability. Skill designed to be used in tandem with Blade Fury, doesn’t mesh well due to risk of breaking Eth weapon
Cloak of Shadows - cooldown removed to incentivize leveling skill
Druid
Arctic Blast - change skill to a cone of cold rather than a frosty flamethrower
Rabies - increase poison creeper synergy and reduce poison duration
Lycanthropy - add faster run/walk by 1% per level for greater mobility
Hunger - skill will always hit target
Poison Creeper, Carrion Vine, Solar Creeper - significantly increase life and add physical damage reduction to vines for improved survivability
Armageddon - benefits from FCR and increases frequency of falling meteors
Barbarian
War Cry - reduce mana cost to 0.60 per level to improve cost-effectiveness
Bash - add 1% crushing blow per level (Basher build is a boss-killer)
Shout - add bonus to attack rating in addition to defense rating (makes skill more beneficial for group play)
Concentrate - change Bash synergy to Shout, which complements this uniquely defensive build and increase Berserk synergy to 3% (up from 1%)
Grim Ward - remove fear effect and can now be used on any corpse
Iron Skin - adds physical damage reduction of 0.5% per level, only hard points (Barb should thematically be able to absorb huge hits, rather than evade)
Frenzy - remove Taunt synergy and adjust the other synergies as follows:
Double Swing: +8% damage per level
Berserk: +3% magic damage per level
Increased Stamina: +6% damage and
+0.4 seconds per level
Find Potion - increase drop chance for Rejuv Potions, add chance to find Throwing Potions, add new Double Throw synergy that adds damage for:
Strangling Gas Potions
Choking Gas Potions
Rancid Gas Potions
Fulminating Potions
Exploding Potions
Oil Potions
Increased Stamina - grants a passive increase to faster hit recovery per level
Necromancer
Golem Mastery - grants 10% AR per level instead of flat 25 AR per level. Also, now adds 10% damage per level (single, strong monster)
Blood Golem - apply open wounds to both on striking and when struck
Fire Golem - increase fire damage and lower enemy fire resistance per level
Raise Skeletal Mage - significantly increase elemental damage and missile speed. Also, missiles now have chance to pierce per level
Poison Explosion - apply poison damage immediately in radius of effect
Poison Dagger - grants 2% IAS per level and poison damage is applied over 4 seconds (make daggermancer viable)
Sorceress
Hydra - Fire Bolt synergy increased from +3% to +6%, remove Fire Ball synergy. Damage remains the same, but allows more hybrid builds
Thunderstorm - benefits from FCR and increases frequency of lightning strikes or adds additional target every 5 levels
Meteor - convert some of the fire damage to physical damage to help deal with immunity, similar to Molten Boulder. Keep overall damage the same
Frozen Armor, Shiver Armor, Chilling Armor - should not have synergies with each other. No one is going to invest 20 points for all 3 armors. They should have synergies with other skills…
Ah man…just look at these: Necromancer improvements Druid improvements
Anyway, for Druid I’d add change pathfinding for Twister and Tornado so these whirlwinds will fly more straight where you aim them. Also Arctic Blast requires some love.
I tried to main the Fire Elementalist Dudu, but without Enigma it was too slow compared to Sorc, so until I was able to get Jah and Ber I mained Sorc. Now that I can play with the Dudu as main - and even yesterday I managed to kill DClone with him - my personal opinion about the fire skills are these:
Mmmm for barbs i would replace stun with something like cleave (req 2 handed wep , hits enemies in front of the barb) . The absence of 2h builds for the barbarian makes me real sad
Leap attack aOE scaling from weapon damage
WW 2handed fpa back to a max of 4fpa (damm You blizz killing an already weak build). Now that slows affect ww fpa make it that we can use potions While ww… atm ww has all the drawbscks of other melee but can’t use a potion or proc on hit effects .
Heavy armor innate damage reduction % . This would at least put a reward for spending Many points into stre.
Increased stamina suks … add a flat +lífe per hard point .
I’m not a fan of Shout boosting Attack Rating given that the Barbarian has Weapon Mastery and Combat Skills doing that already. Unless this is to encourage more group play, then that would be the only reasoning that makes sense. Keep in mind this also makes Ancients that much harder since Madwc casts it.
As for Grim Ward, your reasoning lacks logic. If you’re changing it to Taunt enemy monsters because its redundant with Howl by fearing them, how is your change not redundant with respect to the Taunt skill? My idea with Grim Ward is that it no longer requires a corpse, behaves like a Trap and expires after x seconds(duration impacted by skill level) and SLOWS enemies down(pocket Holy Freeze that would greatly help the Barbarian out in Combat situations).
I also thought about Increased Speed acting as a “passive” Skill IAS for Barbarians. I mean yes they can acquire Skill IAS via Frenzy but if you’re a 2-H Barbarian or Sword&Board, you can’t tap into it. If Increased Speed boosted Skill IAS(1% to 2.5% per level), it would greatly benefit ALL BARBARIANS, but most notably the 2-H/Sword&Board setups with respect to Whirlwind. It wouldn’t solve the issue of WW not hitting the old 4-Frame breakpoint but it would help immensely in countering Holy Freeze/Decrepify.
As for Sorceress, I’ve felt Thunderstorm’s radius of effect needs to be greatly expanded(at minimum of 13.3 yards to match Conviction aura but perhaps even basing it on Skill level). Furthermore, I’ve felt the skill should behave like Fist of Heavens and have a Nova Shockwave or Charged Bolts based on number of nearby enemies to emanate from the impact point, thereby giving it considerable AoE. If it’s a Nova shockwave, it’d synergize quite well with Nova build.
As for the Cold Armor spells, I agree and came to find Chilling Armor should synergize with Ice Bolt, Shiver Armor with Ice Blast/Glacial Spike and Frozen Armor with Frost Nova.
As for Frost Nova, I completely overhauled its synergies. Out goes Blizzard/F-Orb and in comes all three Cold Armor skills. The reason being that Frozen Nova requires that you get in very close so having a STRONG Cold Armor would be shrewd and having all three Armor spells as synergies means players can pick and choose which Armor spell to utilize.
Hello no to double swing as a sinergy to WW .
Why , why do You all think that all barbs are dual wielding ? WTF i want to use 2handers ! Dumping 20 points into a sinergy wich i wouldnot even use and in some cases couldnt use (spear and poleaxe barbs) is another nail into the 2handed coffin…
Ww already Got wtfpwned for 2handers with a gigantic 20% damage nerf due to only reaching 5fpa instead of 4 fpa for every 2 hander NOT a sword … Wich brings me to : what’s the friggin love to swords??
I said improve ww, and uncouple double swing synergy. Two separate skill balances. I want double swing to direct scale damage rather than having to level bash as a synergy just for the skill to do damage. I said nothing about a synergy of any kind to ww.
The worst build in the game to level up is a physical bowazon. A barb using normal attack is way more powerful in levels 1-30. If you play physical bowazon, you pretty much have to use some sort of leveling build or cheese. Even if you’re a purist.
So with that in mind, Multi shot should start with 5 arrows, and gain 1 arrow every 4 levels until level 20. And after that 1 arrow every 2 levels.
Magic arrow should be a synergy for both strafe and guided arrow. In the case of strafe, magic arrow synergy replaces guided arrow synergy.
Magic arrow +damage should apply before %Enhanced Damage. Magic arrow and multishot should probably come with 100% enhanced damage too.
Not to worry about barbarian class, Blizzard probably saw some shortcomings of recent (2.4.3) changes to whirlwind. This time (in 2.5 patch) they will fix it properly to bring it to the right playing feel. They will increase the damage bonus by 1% per skill level and bring back 4fpa for two handed non-swords weapons. To retain the power ballance the whirlwind won’t be unninterruptible anymore…
Hmm all support, gonna have a tough one to sell that
All in all though, like most ideas.
Yep, easily needs love.
All yes please.
Warcry-yes
Shout-neutral atm, would need to dive in to give a real opinion, not my first choice for sure as barb can already gain good AR and can remove chunks of defense.
Concentrate, sure sounds good.
Iron Skin again sounds good.
Golem Mastery-might actually be to strong if the damage bonus is multiplicitive, possibly even without, but do like the idea itself.
Blood Golem-as now sure (when active summon), but with 6 of them (definitely managable with your Golem Mastery proposal) this would be to strong imo.
Fire Golem- Same as Blood Golem.
Raise Skeletal Mage-needs some loving indeed,
Poison Dagger-definitely needs loving, I presume I would also negate negative resistance not start at 0 no matter what (cause that would mean always -100 ofcourse).
If always acting as if 0 res, it would still be good, as there would never be immunes, however you nerf it vs non-immunes (-105% is quite managable even while wearing Treachery, in case you weren’t aware Venom boosts PD pretty hard, not sure on exact numbers anymore but even if only for Venom Treachery was better then Bramble, but Fade and 45ias are always welcome aswell ).
Damage per sec the same as now? Because that part would make the 4 sec a nerf and while damage can get pretty good, this build would need CB to kill the really tough ones and be less effective when fully decked vs for example Baal then the current version.
Think I like the long duration version though.
Agree to all, except Thunderstorm, it needs a lot more than slightly in PvE, but might be unbalancing PvP (not a real PvP’er but iirc Thunderstorm was actually okay there).
Maybe a lightning doesn’t strike the same target twice mechanic (at least within certain time frame, like current frequency or something) and buff it’s frequency pretty good after that.
Just has to be
I think Blizzard will fix WW next patch though, likely somewhere in the line, we noticed WW underperforming so increased the effect of ias on it and we rolled a dice and it turned out were capping it at the sorceress attacks per second now.
This will let you reach maximum attacks per second a lot faster.
(then they laugh, congratulate each other on a job well done and ask the bartender for the next round of shots).
The only problem with this topic is that you strictly talk about buffs, buff this buff that, but at what cost? We just gonna add a 1000% multiplier to hp, defenses, AR and damage and call it finished product?
I think if you were to add a buff to a skill, it has to even out on the other end, the whole “buff buff buff buff” idea is beyond control.
In my opinion I’d be more impressed if I saw stuff like;
Thunderstorm - Now has 10(+10 per level) charges per cast, frequency based on fcr and base damage reduced by 15%.
It would change the idea, while it stays the same, making it new and intuitive and maybe mattering more in the long run. Could even go so far as, while buffed it reduces nearby enemies attack rating by X amount.
Along with that then add:
Teleport - Now costs equal amount of health as mana and reduces defenses by 10% per cast each stack lasting 2 seconds.
We all think teleport is too powerful a tool to be used, the way we use it in diablo 2, this could give consequence of overspending.
I think a poison dagger rework would be more ideal, like;
“Poison Dagger - Now grants: 0,1 second reduced duration of poison afflicted by poison dagger per level, dealing XXX damage over 8 seconds, when killed, remaining poison damage spreads to nearby enemies”
2 handed weapons need a buff. Anyone using them loses the shield slot, so anyone using them loses block and the stats from the shield, and they don’t do enough damage.
The same with heavy armor - they require massive strength which could have been spent on vit, they make you move slower, then just have a little more armor than the medium armors. They need a big boost of some kind as currently they are not worth the massive stremgth investment
